Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep within.
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Bits and pieces of cloth sewn or glued together curtain the world.
Bits and pieces of knowledge skillfully intertwined make up the study
of history. Every civilization has this tradition of squirreling away
precious fragments until they are needed to construct a whole.
The Whole Cloth
by Mildred Constantine and Laurel Reuter
One Woman's Sewing Bee is a collection of descriptive essays about
pieces of clothing that I, the "one woman" of the title, would like
to sew. These are coupled with clothing practices and beliefs, along
with some secrets of clothing, all discovered in my readings on the
subject. Vignettes of personal memories make up the third strand of
the text. The pieces explore both the universal and the personal in
the ordinary structure of clothing. One Woman's Sewing Bee is my
version of how we weave the threads of our lives into a whole.
Media: laser printed on an HP Laserjet, using QuarkXPress;
sewing machine and hand-stitching throughout. Edition size: 25.
Year of completion: 2002.
